Sunday, August 07, 2005

Ninety-Nine Nights and Aloha weekend

I’m almost finished my second time through Haunting Ground. It’s not often I beat a game more than once, but this one had me for some reason. Kingdoms Under Fire: The Crusaders is also getting some play, mostly because the sequel is coming out next month.

As great as they are, it’s hard not to look toward the future at Phantagram’s next venture, Ninety-Nine Nights for the Xbox 360. The screenshot above would seem to indicate the game is somewhat similar to Kingdoms, but they are partnered up with Tetsuya’ Mizuguchi’s Q Entertainment. I can’t wait to see what fruit this pairing bears.

While we’re on the topic of Xbox, I’m starting to weigh any upcoming purchases with increasing suspicion. Is this game going to be one of the lucky few that are worthy of “becoming” backward compatible with the 360? Let’s see, definitely want Kingdoms Under Fire: Heroes, and the SNK triple crown of KOF 94 Rebout, Samurai Shodown V, and KOF Neowave. And, uh, er…um that’s about it I think. Ninja Gaiden Black is sort of on the bubble at this point.

With limited entertainment space, I want, no must make room. Switching to the slim PS2 helped a little bit, but the Xbox is sucking up some prime real estate. Ah, I guess I’ll just banish it to the bedroom. None are so good they must be played NOW, but there are reasons, very special reasons, why I feel I need to give them some time. The list include Bard’s Tale (will probably play soon actually), Breakdown (I like the demo), CSI, Futurama, Jet Set Radio Future (must play this dammit), Phantom Dust (Panzer Dragoon guys, offbeat pseudo card battling adventure? I’ll love it or not), Shenmue II, and Silent Hill 2 (one of my favorite games evar, so I really want to play the exclusive Maria bits).

Lindsay hipped me to the annual Aloha Festival this past weekend at the Presidio in SF, so my wife and I checked it out. Traffic getting there was crazy and I totally forgot how cold the Presidio gets. Even though it was a near sweltering 85 degrees in Alameda, I swear it was around 55 degrees at the Presidio, chillier with the whipping wind. You can clearly see the grey fog blanketing the sky.

We browsed the booths after getting some grub, but didn’t last long before escaping to the warm confines of Japan town mall. Oh well, it was a nice day anyway.